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Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

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Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#181

Post by rahimnathwani »

warp_factor wrote: post #73
mcbits wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a few stories of businesses and their employees all losing their Google accounts, just because the company hired a freelancer who had previously been banned, and Google detected the association. (Pretty sure they got the accounts back after some public outrage.) I wouldn't risk intentionally violating their terms if you're not quite ready to wake up one day 100% Google-free, or very good at hiding your trac…

The fact that this is even a remote possibility should worry everyone of the ugly monopoly that Google became. I found myself in a similar situation a couple months ago. An android App falsely charged me on the Play store. After trying to contact Google for multiple weeks I gave up and disputed the charge on my credit card. This resulted in Google coming after me for 8.99$ and threatening me to close all my Google ac…

"An android App falsely charged me on the Play store."

I'm curious to know how this happened. Would you mind sharing more info?

As I understand it, the only way for an app to 'charge you on the play store' is to:

1) Be a paid app (in which case you pay before the app starts installing), or

2) via in-app purchases, which are handled by the app initiating the IAP, and then Play services taking over to ask for confirmation.

In either case, the transaction is only confirmed by a user action (tapping a button) with the app having no control.

Sure, it's possible for an Android app to trick you, by covering everything apart from the button with something fake, but I'd be surprised if such an app found its way into the Play Store.

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#182

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

userbinator wrote: post #29
binwiederhier wrote: post #19

In the same spirit, I made a few "just for fun" plugins for my (now abandoned) encrypted-arbitrary-storage Dropbox-like application Syncany: The Flickr plugin [1] stores data (deduped and encrypted before upload) as PNG images. This was great because Flickr gave you 1 TB of free image storage. This was actually super cool, because the overhead was really small. No base64. The SMTP/POP plugin [2] was even nastier. It…

Anything that persists can be used to store arbitrary data... I remember (around a decade ago now, I'm not sure if these still exist) coming across some blogs that ostensibly had images of books, details about them, and links to buy them on Amazon and such... I only understood when I came across a forum posting from someone complaining that his ebook searches were clogged with such "spam blogs", and another poster si…

IIRC the “mods are asleep, post […]” 4chan meme originally came from “mods are asleep, post high res” threads where to an outside observer they were just posting high-resolution images of inane things, but there was actually steganography of some sort going on to hide child porn (I think) inside the files.

One of many Internet jokes with sinister origins.

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#183

Post by xamuel »

romanhn wrote: post #63
reaperducer wrote: post #27

Base64 is such a wonderful gift. Back when the commercial internet was just getting its act together there were companies that would give you free online access on Windows 3.1 machines in exchange for displaying ads in the e-mail client. (I think one was called Juno.) The hitch was that you could only use e-mail. No web surfing. No downloading files. No fun stuff. But that's OK, since there were usenet- and FTP-to-em…

That reminds me of the first time I accessed World Wide Web. Back in '96 I was browsing a computer magazine and happened upon a listing of useful mailing lists, one of which returned the contents of web pages for a requested HTTP address. Same magazine had an install CD for the free Juno email service. Being a teenager, the first web page I ever requested was www.doom.com, which returned a gibberish of text to Juno's…

It's really sad thinking how kids these days totally miss the wonder of the early internet.

In my case, it was at the public library. The lone internet computer was constantly booked. But by watching over a library clerk's shoulder, I was able to see the password needed to unlock the text-based library catalog terminals (which terminals were plentiful and always available). (My parents worked at the library, or else I never could have pulled that off.) Once unlocked, I was able to use Lynx to telnet into my favorite MUD game. Unfortunately it didn't last long until a librarian caught me, which I think resulted in me being grounded from the library for a month or something like that.

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#185

Post by chii »

scottmf wrote: post #169
chii wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tell me which provider has an integrated single signon service for all of those above? Which provider has apps for their service for all major OS'es (including mobile), and is mostly free (or low cost)?

apple

last i checked, icloud apps can only run on macs.

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#186

Post by chii »

tskguarantee wrote: post #154
chii wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tell me which provider has an integrated single signon service for all of those above? Which provider has apps for their service for all major OS'es (including mobile), and is mostly free (or low cost)?

Microsoft does. OneDrive for storage, Outlook webapps does email and calendar. Office online has Word, Excel, etc. All accessed with one Microsoft account. All free. You might not want to be tied to Microsoft but Google is not the only option. Edit: Overlooked the comment about Apps. Microsoft offers apps for mobile, but not Linux. Although even on Windows I use the browser to access the services which will work on L…

Microsoft's office offerings comes very close (cept for the free part - which i guess is just a bonus and not a requirement). Although i have to say, despite microsoft's attitude for keeping compatibility and old stuff working, they too could chuck a google reader one day, and deprecate/remove a needed service (along with all your data).

What's needed is a syndication of data, and inter-operable apps. Like how xmpp worked. But of course, all vendors don't like this, because it turns themselves into a commodity.

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#187

Post by LostJourneyman »

vageli wrote: post #164
guitarbill wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sooner you start, the better. I've moved most of my email/contacts/calendar away [0], and the longer you give yourself to catch the things you've signed up for but forgotten, the better. Youtube was also a pain, but I transitioned my subscriptions manually to a different account. Maps seems like it'd be the trickiest if you're invested. I wasn't a heavy user, and maps still works pretty good when you're logged ou…

> [0] I use fastmail + custom domain, which works great, but you have to guard the domain very closely. What do you mean by guarding the domain? To prevent large volumes of spam?

I think OP means that you have to make sure you don't forget to/neglect to renew it and make sure you don't accidentally lose the domain for any reason.

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#188

Post by xamuel »

joebergeron wrote: post #11

Me and a friend came up with a similar idea of a sort of distributed file system implemented across a huge array of blog comment sections. Of course you’d need a bunch of replication and fault tolerance and the ability to automatically scrape for new blogs to post spammy-looking comments on, but I thought it was a pretty funny and neat idea when we came up with it.

It's even more interesting to think about this in the context of preserving banned information for future generations. For example, if all the countries in the world united to ban the New Testament. But you eventually realize the ephemeral nature of the net will probably prevent it from fulfilling such long-term data-archiving roles and you're better off burying manuscripts deep underground.

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#189

Post by derivagral »

_bxg1 wrote: post #9

I had an (evil; don't do this) idea a while back to create a Dropbox-like program that stores all your data as binary chunks attached to draft emails spread across an arbitrary number of free email accounts.

Did this as a college project with a friend, was pretty fun.

Nowadays stuff like Dropbox is much more convenient and reliable.

Re: Unlimited Google Drive storage by splitting binary files into base64

#190

Post by tln »

clarry wrote: post #179
BlackRing wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember using it back in 2005 iirc, and it was amazing. The files had a label called gmailfs.gDisk which is how it could keep the "file system" separate from the rest. Now Google generously offers Drive with 15Gigs of space.

15 gigs would've been generous in 2005, now it's not.

Are there competitors who offer more for free?
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